The Sidney Prize For Long-Form Magazine Essays
The prize honours the best long-form magazine essays of the year. Its name is a tribute to Sidney Hook, the American philosopher who wrote that “as everything becomes shorter and faster, essay-writing is a form of resistance that shouts, ‘Stop!’”. Each year, New York Times columnist David Brooks gives out the Sidney Awards to celebrate some of the best examples of such writing.
This year, he has singled out a piece about student hypersensitivity by Maya Srikrishnan and Ashley Clarke for The Atlantic. Their reporting tracked how state governments were stifling data requests from low-income taxpayer clinics by stalling, quoting outrageous fees, and refusing to disclose even the most basic information. They were able to track this trend and expose the resulting injustice by working with local advocates, filing public records requests, and interviewing hundreds of people, from state legislators to state attorneys general.
Another of this year’s winners is Professor Kate Carte from Southern Methodist University for her book Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Omohundro Institute of Early American Studies, 2019). Carte’s book is an outstanding work of scholarship that makes a significant contribution to the field of American religious history.
In addition to the two main prizes, this year’s event will also include a special prize for the Event Cinemas Rising Talent Award, which recognises a NSW-based creative whose short film stands for innovation and imagination with high impact. It includes a $10,000 cash prize.
Lastly, there will be a prize for the MAK Halliday Postgraduate Research Prize, which is sponsored by the staff of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. This is an annual award in recognition of the best paper by a postgraduate researcher within the Department.
If you would like to enter, you can do so for free by taking out a one-year subscription to Overland at the special subscriber rate. The winner will be published in our autumn issue, and the runners-up will appear online.
The Sydney Morning Herald Essay Prize is a chance for you to share your writing with a large and diverse audience. Write about what makes you optimistic about the future of Sydney or NSW and why, or tell us what you wish more people understood about the place. The winning entry will receive $1,000 and spend a day in the Sydney Morning Herald newsroom, and our judges will choose two runners-up.
The Sydney Peace Foundation’s Sidney Prize is Australia’s international peace prize and recognises leading global voices promoting peace, justice and nonviolence. Previous winners have included Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Joseph Stiglitz. The City of Sydney supports the prize by providing a financial contribution along with in-kind support. You can help the Sydney Peace Foundation continue to support its Laureates in their vital work for a fairer, more just world. Please consider donating to the Sydney Peace Foundation today. The more you give, the more we can do.